Monday, June 20, 2005

Hugh Hewitt ~ Breaking the Durbin Code

SENATE MAJORITY LEADER BILL FRIST and Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter should move this week to initiate a censure resolution of Illinois Senator Dick Durbin for his remarks on the Senate's floor on June 14, 2005. Not only did Durbin's remarks injure America's position in the world, provide an enormous propaganda victory to the enemy, and slander the United States military, they also represent an escalation in the political rhetoric of the left, which is designed to undermine the public's confidence in the military, the administration, and the war. The censure resolution will oblige every senator to go on the record about how they view the American military as we enter the long phase of the war.

The outrage over Dick Durbin's comparison of interrogation practices at Gitmo to the Nazi, Soviet, and Pol Pot regimes has deeply injured Durbin's reputation and the reputation of the Democratic party that keeps him in the number two leadership position in the United States Senate.

Yet the left has rallied to Durbin's side--their biggest blogger, Markos Moulitsas, proclaimed, for example, "the Wingers are freakin' out about Durbin right now, trying to shut his efforts to speak the truth." The mainstream media haltingly tried to first ignore, and then shift, the story.

Durbin's original remarks on Tuesday, June 14, and his subsequent commentary and statements tell us a great deal about the strategy and mindset of the Democratic party as we approach the fourth anniversary of the war's beginning. I am collecting all those early statements here, in the order they appeared, for the purpose of showing exactly what it was that Durbin set out to do and how, even after a volcano of condemnation erupted around him, he clung to his core message. A debate over a censure resolution will oblige both parties to draw lines about Durbin's remarks, and especially about the character and purpose of the United States armed services.